There was no building large enough in Harn to hold the entire village, so the meeting was held in the square with Tussnig’s poorly constructed statue and the eye of Tarl-an-Gig watching over it. Furin and Dyon stood before the shrine. Udinny had decided not to come, she had told him she thought the whole thing doomed. He did not know why she thought that, and did not ask. It was rare to see the monk of Ranya so negative and he did not like it. Instead she had gone with the boy Issofur to play in Woodedge.
The villagers gathered and he saw Venn, standing at the edge of the crowd away from others that he knew or recognised: Ont, the obnoxious butcher, huge in among the rest of them, bigger even than him. Gussen and Aislinn, the gate guards, Sengui, the gasmaw farmer, the tanner, Diyra, Manha, the leader of the weavers, and next to her Ilda, the woodcarver. By the Forestgate the two reborn stood, still as statues. If he had not been looking he would not have seen them.
A gentle snow fell on the crowd and though the air may have been cold in the square the atmosphere was not; the people of Harn knew the trouble they were in. Maybe they had put it aside until now, but the calling of the meeting had brought their fear and worry bubbling up.
“Listen!” shouted Dyon. “Listen to your Leoric! The Leoric wishes to speak and so the people must listen!” The crowd quietened, apart from a little mumbling. Furin looked around herself. Nodded thanks to Dyon.
“We live in strange times,” she said, standing before the statue of the balancing man. “Even the weather is strange, last week we had the warmest day of Harsh any could remember. Today it snows once more.” She put out a hand, catching a flake of snow. The crowd murmured general agreement. Cahan had heard it said in the monastery that as the new Cowl-Rai rose the weather became unsettled, as if the great changes happening in Crua confused the seasons. “We lost one of ours, Gart, who was respected by all.” More murmuring. “We were made afraid for our lives, by soldiers of Harn county, of our High Leoric, of our Cowl-Rai. People we thought we trusted. Those we have fought for, and believed were meant to protect us.” Only silence in the square. “We were saved by a man many of us scorned.” Discomfort in the crowd but Furin did not stop. “We must decide, now, what we do. Who we are. Where we go from here.”
“It is done,” shouted someone from the crowd. “They lost, they will not come back. Why would they care about Harn?” Murmurs of agreement, mostly from those few who had been here all their lives, never left the place. But others, the ones who had fought, or visited other towns in trade or wandered, as some did, they did not say anything.
“The Rai are proud,” said Furin. “They rule with that pride, they are used to that pride.” She looked around the crowd of villagers. “They will not let what happened here stand.”
“Then what do we do?” this voice quiet. Cahan thought it was Ilda, the woodcarver, who spoke. She was not well liked, considered unlucky. Her work required wood from Harnwood and she had lost two wives and three husbands to the gathering of it.
“I will let the forester speak. Come up here, Cahan,” said Furin.
Hearing his name used before all, making his way through the crowd was a strangely hard thing. He felt every pair of eyes upon him. They were frightened, and they wanted strength and reassurance. Once he had been the forester, a clanless outsider. Slowly they had come to accept him, and now he stood before them a warrior, in armour finer than most would ever have seen. He had thought it odd that the Leoric asked him to speak but as he came to stand by her he understood why she wanted him. The people of Harn were used to looking up to the Rai. To obeying them and expecting them to lead, and in his armour he echoed what they knew. He looked like someone powerful and of means.
He had never spoken before many people at once. He tried to speak into the expectant silence. Failed. Cleared his throat and started again.
“You must leave here,” he said. Then stepped back. Happy to have said his piece.
Uproar, immediate and loud. People shouting at him. At each other. Furin shook her head, stepped forward.
“Quiet!” she held up her hands, raised her voice. “Quiet!” The crowd quietened, a little. “Let the forester give you his reasons,” she glanced back at him, and it was not a friendly look though he did not know why. “He will tell us why we must leave, and where we must go. He will not simply tell us what to do.” She turned to him. Spoke softly to him, “Won’t you, Cahan.” He took a breath, nodded. Understood her anger a little. Stepped forward once more. Cleared his throat before he tried to speak.
“The Rai are proud as Furin said,” he looked at the crowd. So many faces. “What happened here,” he waved towards the village, “they cannot stand for it. It is a wound to their pride. They will come back, and they will come back stronger.”
“This is your fault!” shouted Ont. “They came for you! You brought them here!” He pushed through the crowd until he stood at the front. “They want him!” he shouted. “We should give him to them!” Something slow and ugly moved through the crowd. He felt it before they did. He felt their fear as if it were a littercrawler’s tentacles, wrapping around its prey, grasping it. Ont had given them something to hold onto in a moment of desperation. And they were pulling it close. The idea transmuting their fear into anger, toward violence.
“Stop this!” shouted Furin. “Stop this now!” The crowd were pushing forward. Beneath Cahan’s skin something writhed.
You need me.
He could make them stop.
“You saw him fight!” shouted Furin. The jostling lessened, though the atmosphere still felt ugly. Ont stepped out to the front of the villagers.
“We saw him and that Rai,” he said, “she beat him easily. He has no power, not like the Rai.” The butcher was all threat, all anger, and Cahan knew this man did not know what he had done to the gate. None of them did, and that made the crowd more dangerous. To him, and to them. “There is only one him,” said Ont, pointing at Cahan.
You are the fire.
“And what of them,” shouted the Leoric, and she pointed towards the Forestgate where the reborn stood. “Did you forget them? They butchered every guard in the village and never broke sweat. You think you can stand against them, do you?” Silence, the crowd looking at one another.
“Then the forester should leave,” this from Ilda, the woodcarver. “We cannot fight him, and we should not wish him harm. But he should leave here.” Agreement in the crowd.
“Leave!” shouted another voice.
“Aye, leave us, Clanless,” shouted another.
“It will do you no good!” This shouted from the back. The words stopped the crowd. They turned. Venn, standing against the mud wall of a roundhouse. “It will do you no good to banish Cahan, and it is not his fault either, past being born who he was and none can help that.” Their voice quietened a little towards the end of their words.
“And what would you know of this?” said Ont. “You are just some child of the Rai, brought along for their first blooding.”
“Child of the Rai,” said Venn softly. “Yes, I am that.” The trion wiped at the blue line across their eyes, smearing it over their face. “I was there when the orders were given to Sorha by the High Leoric. They did not only want Cahan,” Venn looked around them at the crowd. “They were sent here to kill him, yes, him and anyone who had known him, or talked with him or seen him. They were to wipe all trace of you from Crua. Cahan’s farm, your village, everything around it. All of you.”
Silence.
Into that silence came a voice, a question. Spoken quietly, unbelieving.
“Why?”
Venn wrapped their arms around themselves, avoided the gaze of the gathered villagers.
“I do not know. But it was the order she gave.”
“The High Leoric wanted us all dead?” That from Ont. Venn shook their head again.
“Not the High Leoric,” said Venn. “The order came from the south. From the Cowl-Rai in Tilt.” The villagers looked at one another.
“What do we do then?” said one, the weaver, Manha. “Where do we go?” Cahan stepped forward.
“The forest,” he said. A collective gasp. “I know it scares you, but to stay here is death.” Upset, discomfort, none wanted to hear it.
“He is right,” said Furin, the Leoric. “He is right.”
“We cannot,” said Ilda, she sounded broken. “The forest is death, and I well know it. Besides, this is our land, where we have lived for generations. This is our place in Crua. We cannot leave.”
“We must,” said Furin. “I travelled here from far Jinneng,” she said, “I followed my secondmother’s bloodline back to Harn. I made a new life. We can do that.” She looked from face to face to face among the crowd. “We can make a new life in the forest.”
“Become Forestals?” said a voice from the crowd. “Outlaws?”
“No,” said Furin. “Not that, we will be us. The same village but in a different place. We will rebuild.”
“This land under our feet,” said Ont, “is what we are. We move somewhere else, we betray our ancestors. We become clanless.”
“It is that or death,” said Furin.
That silence again. The sound of people confronted by something they could barely comprehend. By a choice that, for them, had no favourable outcome. To be clanless was to be nothing, a form of death to them.
“Maybe there is another way.” This from Dyon. He stepped forward. “Maybe we can offer the Rai a trade,” he said. “Maybe we can make ourselves worth keeping to them. Make Harn worthwhile to them.”
“How?” said Ont. “We have nothing that they cannot take.”
“I think we have,” said Dyon. Furin turned to him.
“Do not do this,” she hissed the words. Cahan’s heart fell. He knew what Dyon was going to say, he knew how it would sound to the villagers and he knew it would do them no good.
“It might work,” said Dyon to her. Furin turned away, her anger barely contained. She could not look at her second, but it did not stop Dyon.
Only a terrible sense that events were out of his control. Of knowing where this path ended, and that there was nothing he could do to change it. “There has been treefall,” said Dyon, “in Wyrdwood.”
Silence. This time of a different timbre.
“Treefall,” said Manha, the weaver, she scratched her head. “Here? In the Northern Wyrdwood? Are you sure?”
“Yes,” said Dyon.
“And you kept this secret?” said Ont.
“You do not understand,” said Furin. “Treefall will bring them here, in the same way news of Cahan did. It is not a bargaining tool. It is another cut that will lead to us bleeding to death.”
“I have thought on that,” said Dyon. He had the crowd now, they were desperate for hope. Any hope, and Dyon was giving it to them, false and foolish as it was. “We send people to them,” he said. “But no one who knows where the treefall is. Wyrdwood is huge, they could waste many years looking for it. We get them to agree to leave Harn alone, in exchange we will show them where it is. We will work with them, help them.”
He had the crowd, or most of them. Those who had served, who had been soldiers and met the Rai? They stayed quiet. But the others, the ones to whom this small place was their entire lives, they were desperate to believe what Dyon said. Furin moved closer to Cahan.
“He is killing everyone here,” she whispered, “and does not know it.” Cahan nodded. Whispered back.
“You, me, Venn, Udinny and whoever else will come. We must leave here, Furin.” She pursed her lips. Took a deep breath. Shook her head.
“They are my people, Forester, I cannot leave them.”
“Then you will die, the Rai will roll over this place as if it does not exist for treefall.” She stared at him.
“Maybe not,” she said, and Cahan wondered if Dyon’s idea was a madness that was catching. Furin used one hand to massage the other. She was looking at Cahan, a terrible sadness within her. “If they will not save themselves, Forester, someone must stay and save whatever can be saved.”
“But you know…” he began, she cut him off. Moving forward holding her hands up.
“Listen to me,” she shouted, “and let us see if we can find some way forward.”
“What do you suggest, Leoric?” this shouted by Aislinn, the gate guard who had lost an eye fighting for the Cowl-Rai in the south. She knew more of the world than Dyon and was one of those not taken in by his words. It did not pass Cahan by that she was careful to use the Leoric’s title, to remind the people around her of who they had trusted to lead them for so long.
“I say we use the forester’s expertise. He knows how to fight.” Furin gave him a nod. “We fortify the village. We strengthen the walls. We learn what we can of arms and when they turn up we look like we will be hard for them to take. It will be easier for them to make a deal with us then, especially if Dyon already told them that only we know where the treefall is. The Rai respect strength.” There was some talk among the villagers. Then one stepped forward, Cahan did not know them.
“Will it not annoy the Rai,” they said, “to get here and find us standing against them?” Furin smiled. Shook her head and managed to look so sure of herself it amazed him.
“No,” she said. “If they are thinking of hurting us then it will make them think twice, and if not, we will simply say we have fortified the village to protect it from Forestals, knowing the riches that will come with treefall.” The villager nodded, and with that it seemed the crowd were satisfied. No matter how strange it felt to Cahan that they could be so easily swayed. Dyon walked away from the shrine, not looking at his Leoric as he knew he had betrayed her confidence. Furin stood by the forester.
“I cannot make your people into an army, Furin,” he said. “They are not warriors.”
“I know,” she replied. Stood nearer, looked up at him and put a hand on his arm. “We need only hold them for one day, Cahan. Then these people will know the truth of the Rai, and what they face. They will be all too happy to escape to the forest then. We can spirit them away in the night.”
“Even one day may be more than your people can manage. And that one day will be bloody work.”
For years he had thought of the Leoric as little more than an annoyance, focused on nothing but collecting taxes and tithes, but to look at Furin was to know himself wrong. He was not sure that ever, in his life, he had met a person as brave as her. She gave him a small smile that made something painful flip over inside his chest. Nodded.
“Then let there be blood,” she said.